Germany and France have done it. Japan has done it. On Thursday the expectation is that the US will also have done it, with official figures showing the world's biggest economy emerging from one of its deepest post-war slumps, with robust growth in the third quarter of 2009.

So where does that leave Britain after last week's surprisingly bad news that the economy has suffered six straight quarters of declining output – unheard of since the government started collecting quarterly data in 1955?

The answer is simple. Two years after Gordon Brown used his last budget speech to boast about Britain being the fastest growing G7 country, the UK will almost certainly be the last major economy to claw its way out of recession.

Back in March 2007, the then chancellor said: "I can report the British economy is today growing faster than all the other G7 economies – growth stronger this year than the euro area, stronger than Japan and stronger even than America." Even when the skies darkened a few months later, when problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market paralysed global financial markets, Brown – who had by this time moved next door to 10 Downing Street – remained upbeat. The economy was strong and resilient, he insisted. It would bounce back before other countries.

These are not boasts the prime minister will be allowed to forget between now and election day. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, twisted the knife in a speech in the City that mocked Brown for his claim that Britain was "better placed" than its rivals to ride out the economic storm. Osborne had plenty of material to work with. The longest recession since the second world war. The fact that Germany, Japan and France have already enjoyed six months of recovery. But his killer fact was that the British economy was now smaller than that of the laggard of the eurozone – Italy.

As it happens, Brown was not the only politician wrong-footed by the third quarter growth figures. Osborne, too, was primed for news that the economy was out of recession and as a result will now be forced to soft-pedal on his message that immediate action is required to cut the government's budget deficit. The shadow chancellor used his speech to highlight Conservative plans for growth and stressed that "we are not proposing to eliminate a £90bn deficit overnight".

The UK's sluggish performance in recent months has had an impact in the City. Sterling fell against the US dollar and the euro, while analysts at Société Générale conjured up memories of the distant past when they put out a note entitled: "Is the UK the sick man of Europe?"

In terms of the recession's duration, that is certainly the case. In Germany and France, the car scrappage scheme has been a key factor in boosting spending and hastening recovery. Britain's "cash for clunkers" deal has also led to a pick-up in car production and forecourt sales, but has not been enough to offset problems in the rest of the manufacturing sector, the continued slump in the construction industry and the weak performance of parts of the service sector, especially hotels and restaurants.

Of all the G7 nations, Britain was the most dependent on financial services and debt-fuelled consumption for its growth. That lack of balance in the economy now appears to be holding back recovery. Japan, Germany and France started to expand again in the spring while City analysts say Canada and Italy will join the US in recording growth in the third quarter. That leaves only Britain, which sank into recession in the second quarter of 2008 and has carried on contracting ever since.

It's not all bad news for Britain. There is good reason – not least the end of the VAT holiday – to expect growth to resume in the final three months of 2009. And although Britain's recession has been the longest in the G7, other nations have seen steeper declines in output.

The savage contraction in global industrial production and trade last winter took its toll on those G7 countries with the biggest concentration of manufacturing. Germany saw a peak-to-trough fall in GDP of 6.7%, while Japan suffered an 8.4% fall before the economy began to recover. So far, the UK economy has fallen 5.9% from its peak in early 2008, significantly worse than the declines of 3.7% in the US, 3.3% in Canada and 3.5% in France.

The less good news is that recovery will be slow. James Knightley, analyst at ING, said it took 17 quarters – more than four years – for the UK to return to its level before the slump of the early 1980s, which saw a decline in output from peak to trough of 6%.

"We suspect it will take a similar amount of time this time given the lack of credit, rising saving, deleveraging and higher taxes that will be acting as a major brake on the economy in an environment of slow income growth," he added.